


Vivid Blue Forget-Me-Nots

by princessoftheworlds



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Language of Flowers, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 18:55:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12138933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessoftheworlds/pseuds/princessoftheworlds
Summary: The first bouquet that shows up on Steve’s doorstep are vivid blue forget-me-nots.





	Vivid Blue Forget-Me-Nots

The first bouquet that shows up on Steve’s doorstep are vivid blue forget-me-nots.

The note tucked in the center reads--

_Stevie, I picked these flowers, because they reminded me off the deep baby blue of your eyes. The shop lady told me that they’re called forgot-me-nots. Isn’t that fucking ironic? The one thing I couldn’t do was hold on to your memory when they put me in the chair._

Only the paper clutched in his overly-dry palm prevents him from balling his hands into fists and pummeling the wall into plaster.

Instead, he sits at his dining table, pouring glass over glass of some expensive bourbon that Tony gifted him last Christmas just for the heck of it but not tasting the liquor as he swallows. He reads the shaky, childlike writing on the note until the words are imprinted in his mind.

Natasha pretends not to notice when he slips the note into the pocket of his newest Captain America uniform as they dress hastily on the Quinjet.

//

Steve returns home a month later to find the first of the petals falling and a paper-wrapped parcel at his front door.

He unwraps it cautiously and finds a grey wool scarf softer than anything he has ever felt before. When he shakes it, another note falls to the white tiles of his kitchen floor.

_In ’38, you nearly died of pneumonia. You’d been running all over Brooklyn that winter with no scarf, delivering your commissions, and, a week before Christmas day, you collapsed in our apartment. We didn’t have any extra money, so I told you I picked up extra money by the docks. I lied, punk. I borrowed money from the O’Connells. I paid them back by pulling shifts in their store after hours. You thought I was dating their daughter. I couldn’t; I was gone on you since long before that._

Tears prickle in the corners of Steve’s eyes, and he presses his lips together mutely. He swallows roughly, wiping falling tears away with a blood-flecked fist.

Bucky won’t accept any invitation to meet Steve, Steve knows that, but Steve can still help his best friend out.

He spends the next morning baking apple cobbler, a dessert that Bucky enjoyed whenever they could buy apples, and leaves his own note besides the plate the he places on his doorstep.

_For my thirteen birthday, you brought my ma a bag of apples, which she baked into the first apple cobbler she ever made with the recipe from our neighbors. I loved it but not as much as you did. The next time we could afford apples, Ma baked a whole piece separate for you to take home to your ma and Becca._

//

The next morning, Steve finds the plate gone but replaced by a set of expensive charcoals.

_You were always sketching in your ratty old journal wherever we went. We could never afford decent color pencils or watercolors for you (what could we really afford?), and you stretched a pack of drawing pencils for several years. Now, you don’t have to._

He picks up the box, turning it this way and that in his careful hands, biting his lip.

And, if he uses his new charcoals to finishing shading a sketch of Bucky posing with his little sister Becca and leaves it outside for Bucky to find, well, nobody has to know.

//

The gift and message exchanges continue for months, at least once every week, and Steve scrounges all of Brooklyn for gifts that Bucky will like.

Until one day, Steve comes home from a mission and finds a bedraggled Winter Soldier sitting this doorstep.

“Hey, Stevie,” a hoarse Bucky Barnes tells him. “Wanna let me in?”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr [here](http://princess-of-the-worlds.tumblr.com/).


End file.
